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What do I tell younger members of the prevailing generation, why do I think and view matters differently ? How do I say to my kids that I am a realist, not necessarily aligned with pragmatists, though I am more likely to concur with the latter than with an ideologist, of whatever hue ?

Well, my dears… One, and foremost : the best among available options is good enough for me. Call it the least worst of the evils, I will not be swayed a millimeter towards anything radical, an ideal you might pitch for. For me, an ideology crafted in the mooning mind is not worth the wind I occasionally let out, which little pass at least leaves me so much the better.

Two : the word perfection, sounding so profound, means little to me. Which, may I add, does not make me in the least sloppy, careless or callous, or less mindful and conscientious. There is no perfection that cannot be futher perfected, no best that cannot be bettered. Doing one’s best or to the best of one’s ability, within the constraints, sounds about right to me. I still remember the salesman, at an electronics goods counter in Singapore, asking a boastful customer rather deflatingly : What is your best, sir ?

Three : promises and plans sound as good to my ears as any other’s. But I do not hold my breath for it to come true. Truthfully, my reaction would soon turn sceptical, even into disbelief, and I am sure to consign the entire matter to the forgotten bin until it becomes worthy of resurrection upon evidence of effective effort. So, professional talkers, the glibbers, PR and advertising industry people, and politicians… Beware. This is one nut that will not be cracked by your words and beautiful presentations.

Four : when people use words like always, never, or any absolutes, they just arouse my suspicion of everything in the offering…

But you get drift, my dear. Which is how I am a realist, not why. As to why, well, let’s just say that I like walking the earth. What the astronauts do is not even interesting to me. So, what choice do I have ?

Except, that I will accept all of what I will otherwise refuse and refute, if you pre introduce yourself and declare yourself to be a romantic; or, if all of it were to relate to your person and concerns no one else in effect; or, if you do not expect or solicit belief at the very start… We both can have a laugh.

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As against that cliched ruse which inimical forces employ to shield themselves in the name of ‘all the innocents,’ I see merit in government crackdown on people who keep their money in anonymity and move it in the cloak of secrecy, or ‘privacy’ as they say.

The government of the day is a representative of the people of this country though, most of us would agree, it has failed at its responsibilities for most of its tenures post independence and has actually sided with large- and small-scale black economy operators, working in institutionalised eddies of corruption and often in cahoots with anti national forces of diverse hues.

In the pic above, you may read up the featured write of a complicit mind who argues divisively for ‘the free Indian’ versus the ‘regimented’ one, who she as one who is part of the mainstream, who affiliates with the ruling BJP and is devoted to the Hindu way of life. I recognise the author as part of that corrupt ecosystem set deep during the previous UPA regime led by one Italian who married into the Nehru family, amassed billions in spoils, and now employs those ‘anonymous’ resources in fomenting chaotic disruptions all over and funding subversive forces to drag the country back into the hold of that clicque that her son now fronts.

The current NDA coalition, which topple the UPA in May 2014, has done especially well in undoing that self-serving ecosystem previously rooted, politically and economically, despite being under duress of programmes launched by black fief chiefs. It has not been helped by the country’s judiciary who, inadvertently or co-optedly, have judged to strengthen that ‘liberal’ smokescreen behind which the suavely unscrupulous find their solace and nurture their survival…all in the name of the innocents, seculars, liberals, deemed freedoms and privacy guarantees.

The government’s public outreach today lines up data in support of its decision to demonetise higher value denominations of the Indian Rupee. It cleared up much of mire in one stroke, which was followed up with another tall milestone reform in taxation system of goods and services. The two combine well with UID linked bank account to the economically weakest strata of our population, direct benefit transfer, crop insurance to farmers, filip to handloom industry, Make In India push, defence fortifying programs, and continued investments in core sectors. The recent jump in the country’s rank on “ease of doing business,” according to World Bank survey, rise in “corruption free” index, and surveyed measure of people’s confidence in this govt and in their own future, reflect the vastly improved state of affairs that now prevail in this nation of 1.3 billion people.

Thankfully, this govt and PM Modi are made of sterner stuff.

I regard it as as our nation’s good fortune that we, as a people, have succeessfully turned ourselves from running into the ground and covering ourselves with the filth of its pits.

Congratulations to us !

Let us give a hand to BJP in Gujarat and Himachal elections and endorse enthusiastically its second term in 2019.

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The Hindu Right has their task cut out, protecting the Hindu practitioners of their free way of life against authoritarian, citadel bound Abrahamic imports that infiltrate armies of conscripted men and women to convert the unsuspecting through deceit and lure. The latter are launched of obnoxious strategies and their particular methods including ‘love jihad’ and ‘population jihad’ of the Islamists and ‘saffron conversion camps’ of Christian missionaries are outright criminal and fraudelant.

Being in a kind of war, the Hindu Right is bound to be militant in their battles while opposing the softly violent creeps. I have two cautions though : one, the Hindu Right warriors must be trained or retrained into that kshatriya dharmic outlook which is fierce and ruthless but also just and not without rules of conduct; and, two, it must not usurp claims of being the whole concern of the Hindu mainstream in the subcontinent. The first necessity is obvious : we do not want them to turn inhumane or subhuman at any point through their battles. But second needs an elaboration.

The whole concern of the Hindu way is spiritual, meaning a continuously expanding heart in day to day action, in preparation of that all-consuming self effulgence during atma sakshatkar, proceeding from the intellect. There is no other way for the Hindu, live or die. The kshatriya teams of the Hindu Right should be oath-bound to protect, not overshadow or usurp, the spiritual occupation of common adherents of the Sanatan way.

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I have a small bed of plants that look like ubiquitous creepers but display absolutely profound behaviour. Every morning these days, they flower bright yellow and deep pink that can hold you mesmerised for a while. Then, by late afternoon, they are no more : gone, shrivelled and fallen. They are an exact metaphor for the observer’s life, rather his or her lifetime. It buds unknown, blooms to prominence, and disappears without a trace.

The seculars have history to replace this impermanence, scientists their theories of everything, and conservatives their traditions. The Hindu has reincarnation, karma, and immortality of the self pure.

There is life perennial and the flickering life of the observer. There is sound in the wilderness when a tree falls, with and without an ear to hear it. Mind it, will you ?

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Believe me, there are two worlds : material and spiritual. The first is objective; the second, subjective. Material accomplishments help us survive, live, leisure and pleasure better. Spiritual negotiations free us of our irrationalities, bias and prejudice, binding habits and false moral supports, unexamined acts and uncritical thinking. The material enhances the availability of time; the spiritual determines its value and utility. The material gives the tools; the spiritual leads us what we will do with them.

Practically, the entire history of civilised people can be seen as seesaw movement between periods of spiritual surge and eras of material accomplishment, with short balanced interregnums of golden eras in between. Mostly, as it happened, the overly spiritual periods were marked by rise of mediating religions, which in the Abrahamic world did little justify their claim as spiritual disciplines. Accomplishments during materially advancing eras were midwived under the patronage of individuals with concentrated wealth, who proliferated in the West during colonial centuries spanning the 17th and the 20th.

In India, the religious mediation to spiritual courses was mostly benign on account of solid empirically validated sutra enumerations under very categorical disciplines such yoga, bhakti, sankhya, vedanta, advaita, etc. Contrary to what happened in the West, Hindu religion metamorphosed into an inclusive way if life, becoming more and more secular and less uniform or regimented and ceding space to practitioners to live as they will within overall values system and perspectival bounds. The religious authorities or ordainers receded into the background and limited themselves to designated monasteries or eshtablishments attached to well-endowed places of worship.

India’s economic solidity however was greatly undermined over the last millennium with foriegn invasions, loot, institutionalised occupation and systematic destruction. During this vast period, the country’s share of global GDP fell from around 25% to 1 odd percent. It has turned itself around since independence and today has a share of about 3% of global trade.

A simple chart of the bottomline status of India and the West could be represented thus :

Clearly, India will need to move vertically up, to the top-left corner of chart. It is not an easy road ahead; but the country has its moorings right and firm, on its solid spiritual foundation.

The West has a desperate need to move to its left on the chart, into the Hi-Hi corner. With its material accomplishments, it may be thought that attaining a high spiritual quotient will be relatively easy. But it is not, because upon a close look we find that significant parts of the population has spurned their native religion — Christianity, and have either adopted the de-spiritualised Islam in vogue or have subscribed to other creed, secular or otherwise.

There is an obvious synergical need for India and the West to embrace each, giving to the other their respective expertise and abundace in stock to urgently meet the shortfalls.

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One : I suppose a man may say, Supreme Court justices are idiots. That would be his opinion. But if the man puts a hoarding to inform the public about his “opinion,” would it still be regarded as an opinion in law ? For the sake of argument, let me present a scenario in which such an “opinion” is plastered on multiple hoardings in every city in the country. What then, my lords ?

Well… ? Likewise, my lords, comments on a fundamental structural matter of national import, in a movie that is potentially meant for audiences all over, may not be considered just an “opinion.”

Two : A woman who conceives on her own, as an adult, is free to abort or not, as she chooses. But a married woman is subject to adultery laws and cannot do as she pleases. I might wonder and question : why ? But the Supreme Court justices ought to know.

Conception in marraige is an event in partnership. Marraige is about extending lineage, in a primary sense. So, why does the woman alone have an unfettered choice in abortion, my lords ?

Three : This is peculiarly an administrative stance, proper to the Executive, my lords, on the premise that if it does as a duck, then it is the duck.

These were one of the worst of times in Indian history, when people were driven to the very pits of despair. Four years through his “padshahi”, Guru Teg Bahadur was informed of Emperor Auragzeb’s general decree authorising and charging every State official of note with the ‘pious’ duty of demolishing all native places of worship and education, converting as many of them into mosques, and prosecuting the persistent non – believers as if they were “persona non grata.”

After Aurangzeb’s 1669 order to demolish non-Muslim temples and schools, a Sikh temple at Buriya was converted into a mosque, which the Sikhs then demolished. The Emperor visited Punjab in 1674, and his officials forced many people to convert to Islam. The Guru gave a call to Sikhs everywhere to withstand these persecutions.

Aurangzeb was a terror even to his co-religionists and members of his own family. He had imprisoned his sister and his father, Shah Jahan, and had all his brothers murdered to become an unrivalled authority unto himself. Perhaps to wash his sins in his own eye, he presented himself to the people as being a good Muslim, offering prayers five times a day, leading a simple and frugal life, and defering to the advice and ruling of the Islamic clergy, who thence endeavoured to bestow on him his very elusive ‘peace of mind.’

The Emperor sent gifts to rulers of Mecca and Medina in 1659. That year he appointed a muhtasib as a censor to enforce Islamic laws. His main advisors became the chief judge (qazi) and supervisor of ‘pious’ charity. In 1672, he took back all grants that had been given to Hindus. In his zeal to reinforce the ‘pious Muslim’ face in public, he sought to please the fanatic Islamists by converting the native non-believers, especially Hindus, through making their keeping of faith impossible, prohibitive and fatal. His method of measuring the success of his ‘conversion program’ was to weigh the sacred thread worn by Hindus ! A “maund” would imply that about 7000 of them had been either converted or killed

One of the major centers of learning then, Kashmir was governed by a liberal Subedar Mir Ahmed Khan, who restricted his administrative machinery to maintaining law and order and implementing the taxation policy of the State. The smooth functioning however was soon disrupted by an overzealous Islamist, Muhata Khan, who was a powerful Islamic scholar of repute. The latter had been sidelined by the coterie whom the brutal Emperor courted, and was hence in dire need of establishing his ‘holier than thou’ upmanship over others in order to tide over his discontentment and regain the Emperor’s favour.

Muhata Khan submitted to the Subedar of Kashmir a list of measures the State must take to penalise, indignify and pauperise the Kashmiri pundits. He was bitterly critical about the liberal policies of Subedar Mir Ahmed Khan and his treatment of the Hindus. He had made it clear that any avenue or opportunity available to the Hindus to advance and progress was intolerable.

Muhata Khan’s charter of demands included the following :

Hindus should not be allowed to ride a horse.

They should not permitted to wear the “jama” (a type of Mughal dress).

They should not keep, carry or handle any kind of weapon.

They should not visit the public gardens.

They should be barred from wearing vermillion (Tilak) on their forehead.

Their wards should not be receive education of any kind.

The Subedar Mir Ahmed Khan refused to entertain any of the proposals submitted by Muhata Khan. He instructed Muhata Khan to keep his distance from affairs of the State in Kashmir.

Attack on Hindu function

But Muhata Khan decided to have his way, by taking the law in his own hands. He set up a centre in a mosque for carrying out his plan. He incited people, who used to come for Namaz, and exhorted them to remain steadfast on tenets and proclamations of Islam, and to bring the Hindu idol worshippers within the ambit of declared Islamic policies of the Emperor. He roused a following of Muslim youth with his discourses, and raised a group of young men who were ready to to do his bidding. Muhata Khan issued instructions for implementing the resolutions he had submitted to the Subedar. As a result, any Hindu found with Tilak on his forehead was mauled badly, even killed, his home vandalised and women folk abducted, molested and raped. The Hindu could no longer ride horses, a speedy means of transport in those days. And he could hardly carry on with his trade or profession, or official duties of the State, without being presentable enough in a decent dress !

An attack on a well-known trader, Majlis Rai Chopra, took a historical turn. Majlis Rai had arranged for community luncheon in connection with a religious function, to which thousands came. While they were having their lunch in a garden, Muhata Khan, with a band of bigots, attacked them with weapons. Majlis Rai managed to escape and took shelter in the house of Mir Ahmed Shah. But that house too was srounded and picketed by the blood-thirsty rowdies. Mir Ahmed Khan made good his escape by a secret door and took refuge in the nearby cantonment. He waged a battle against Muhata Khan with the help of a company of troops, but was defeated. Muhata Khan arrested and jailed the Subedar, denouncing him as a Hindu supporter, and took over the powers of the State.

Majlis Rai was mercilessly killed and all his property was confiscated. It was followed by many more instances of shameless atrocities on the Hindu community in Kashmir. The new Subedar of Kashmir, Iftikhar Khan, took to the task of forcibly converting the Hindu population to Islam by the sword. The Hindu Brahmin Pandits of Kashmir were among the most learned and orthodox of Hindus and Aurangzeb felt that if they could be brought to accept Islam the rest of the country would easily follow. He decided to strike at their exalted identity by barring the practice of wearing tilak(holy mark on the forehead) or janaeu (sacred thread). There was turmoil among Kashmiri pundits and their families lived in fear of their lives. They bore an ultimatum upon their head : convert or die.

In that conspired atmosphere of terror, many Hindus gave in and were converted to Islam. Among the rest was Pundit Kripa Ram, who had met the Guru several times. He led the pundits to the assuring sanctuary of the Sikh Guru, Teg Bahadur, whose very name meant, “Brave of the Sword.” Pandit Kirpa Ram Datt would later become the Sanskrit teacher of Guru Gobind Singh and eventually a Khalsa, and would die fighting in the battle of Chamkaur against Mughal forces led by Wazir Khan.

The Guru soon appointed his son, Gobind Rai, as the tenth Guru of Sikhs and thus addressed the Pandits, “Go, my esteemed friends, and tell the Emperor that if he can cause Guru Tegh Bahadar to change his faith and accept Islam, you will all follow suit in his footsteps. If not, he should leave you alone.”

The Pandits rejoiced at the resolution and duly informed Emperor Aurangzeb of the decision. Aurangzeb was delighted with the reduced task of having to convert just one person in order to obtain the cooperation of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs, and the way to bring millions of willing infidels into the folds of Islam. He summoned his officers to arrest Guru Tegh Bahadar and present him in the royal court.

Meanwhile, the Guru left Anandpur Sahib with Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Dyala and Bhai Sati Das, to seek an audience in Mughal court. He was arrested soon after on the way and brought to Delhi in chains. In the royal court, reminiscent of Jesus’ interrogation by the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate, Aurangzeb asked him why he was hailed as the Guru or the Prophet, addressed as the ‘Saccha Padshah’ or the True King. The argument between Guru Teg Bahadur and the Emperor went on for days. Finally, the Emperor posed to the Guru the plain course, and his Islamist sycophants echoed in unison : “ If you really are the One, as addressed, perform a miracle for us to believe the truth.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur was unmoved and in fact reprimanded the Emperor for his blind orthodoxy and his persecution of people of other faiths. He said, “Hinduism may not be my faith, and I may not believe in the supremacy of Vedas or the Brahmins, nor in idol worship or caste, in pilgrimage or other rituals, but I would stand for the right of all Hindus to live with honour and dignity, and freedom to practice their faith according to their own beliefs.” The Guru further suggested : ” Every ruler of the world must pass away but not the Word of God; nor would the Saint who holds it in his heart. This is how people call me a “True King” and that is why they have done so through two preceding centuries, in respect of my “House“ and in respect of all those others who came before and identified themselves not with the temporal and the contingent, but with the eternal and the immortal.”

The Guru refused to perform any miracle, saying, “this is the work of charlatans and mountebanks to hoodwink the people. Men of God submit ever to the Will of God.” Guru Tegh Bahadur refused to embrace Islam, saying “For me, there is only one religion – of God – and whosoever belongs to it, be he a Hindu or a Muslim, him I own and he owns me. I neither convert others by force, nor submit to force. I will not change my faith.”

Aurangzeb was enraged and ordered Guru Tegh Bahadur to be forced to accept Islam as his faith through torture, or be killed. It led to a period of great cruelty on Guru Teg Bahadur’s body, and of his colleagues. The Guru and his companions were tied to hot pillars and heated sand was poured over their bodies, which were scalded and covered with wounds. The torment, in some form or other, became a routine. Guru Tegh Bahadur was kept in an iron cage and starved for many days. When even the intolerable pain and physical afflictions heaped on them proved ineffective, orders were issued to kill each, one after the other for appropriate effect.

The Fatwa or decree of the Royal Qazi specified the precise manner in which the life of each one was to be taken, with maximum brutality : Bhai Dayal was to be thrown in a boiling pot; Bhai Sati Das, to be packed in a bale of cotton and set ablaze; and, Bhai Mati Das to be sawed into two. The Guru was made to watch as Bhai Mati Das, the devoted Sikh, was tied between two pillars and his body sawed into two, as Bhai Dayal was boiled alive in a cauldron of heated water until he died, and, as Bhai Sati Das was wrapped in cotton wool and set on fire.

The Guru bore these cruelties without flinching or showing any anger or distress. Finally, having put these orders into effect, Guru Teg Bahadur was publicly beheaded on November 11, 1675. Before his head was severed from the body, the Guru had enough to recite the first five lines of the sacred book, Japuji.

The Gurus body was left to lie in dust, in Chandni Chowk, the area right in front of the Red Fort, where no one dared to approach for fear of the Emperor’s reprisal. But a severe storm swept through the city and, while it raged, a Sikh named Bhai Jaita managed to collect the Guru’s sacred head under the cover of darkness. He brought the Guru’s precious remain to Anandpur Sahib, where Guru Gobind waited for the latest to happen. Another Sikh, Bhai Lakhi Shah, smuggled the Guru’s headless body in a cart and brought it to his house nearby, where the Gurudwara Rakabganj today stands. Since a public funeral would have been impossible, Bhai Lakhi Shah cremated the body by setting the entire house on fire !

At Anandpur Sahib, on November 16, 1675, the young Guru Gobind Singh and the grief stricken widow, Mata Gujari, placed the late Guru’s “head” on a pyre of sandalwood, covered it with roses. Guru Gobind lit the pyre to complete the cremation rites of the departed saint

Never before in the annals of history, or after, has a religious head of one faith stood so tall and heavily steadfast, as to sacrifice his own life for the sake of another religion, for their rights and freedoms.

This is history that our historians have weaned away from their narratives; it is what our history texts do not carry. It is these details that clarify the genocidal purge of Kashmiri Pundits since late 1970s, three centuries after the evil was seeded by a Mughal emperor from Delhi, from that line of Islamic invaders who trooped in with bigoted fervour from Central Asia.

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It’s not Monday blues. The moment is early, clear and happy. A why is needless. If I did allow one, it will fill a whole library.

Is existentialism the last of all philosophical statements made in the West ? Properly, it is more an observation than a philosophy. It brings thought to focus on the phenomenal condition of man. As did Marx, about half a century before. The previous one was wholly materialistic; the last presented its spiritual depth. It is easy to see them as integral to each other.

Sartre, the most well-known face of existentialism and its chief ideologue, was more ambitious than what he roundly presents in the tome Being And Nothingness, if you remember its footnotes. He promised to write about the offshoots indicated therein but never did. Contemporaneous with his last days, I recall his perpetual rebellion that led him to compare his Nobel with a sack of potatoes. I empathise with his nausea but still find it pathetic, as a half blind man distributing leaflets in the street.

What was amiss in both the thought and the man ? Happiness, it is plain. And nobility, I suspect.

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I watch this video in mute mode. It emits happiness. I live with her.

Then there was this quote I append below. It compares the given animal ways evident in rats and roaches with what is possible among humans.

The author is a noble thought leader, as are most common folks in this net age. But ask the economists and the legions in our economy : the businessmen and their manfridays in PR & Advertising. And watch the honourable justices in our courtrooms, I dare say. Most among them can’t bear with the possibility. Their impatience shows the contempt.

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The Supreme Lordships have decided on the minimum age for penetrative sex within marriage. It shall be 18, below which a sexual act with one’s sub-18 wife would be a crime that could see one put away into caged isolation for years. It makes for consistency, the justices announced, alongwith the minimum age for marrying your lover, for giving consent and now for enjoying the act…all at 18 or later.

The judgement itself celebrates logic, rationality and “harmonising” the process for young people to marry, consent, and have the pleasure. However, the reality captured in available data is disconcerting : overall, about 30% of women marry before they turn 18 and, by 2011 census, about 8 million had coupled before they were 10. Further, the Muslim Personal Law in India allows girls to marry after they turn 15.

Even globally, there nothing universal about 18 as the age for sexual consent and in general, except for Middle East Islamic nations, it is not the same as the legal age for marriage. Refer data link here. Have our Lordships discovered the rationale for this offset between the age of consent and the age for marriage ? Apparently the two, consent and marriage, are different things : one is hormonal and rooted in irrepressible juvenile biology; the other is institutional, for the purpose of forming a family, pooling personal income and labour economics, raising kids, and continuing the lineage. Or, did the exalted justices make marriage inseparably align with the sex need alone ?

It’s raining questions, in fact. In view of such large numbers of sub-18 girls currently married, tens of millions if not more, what should they do ? Will they have to go without the pleasure until they are 18 ? And consider the constant dread of their husbands even their minor wives beseech : it is a crime they are committing everytime they engage sexually. It could alright while the affection lasts; but what happens if the disaffected ones should one day decide to use one more handle in law to extract undue favours ?

The Sharia provisions are social norms that Muslims generally abide by, which fact the Personal Law in the statute acknowledges. Did the logically harmonising Supreme Court judgement today amend the provisions in Muslim Personal Law ? It stands amended anyway. Or, is it part of the wise Lordships’ plan to usher in the Uniform Civil Code ?

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It is civil but no less lusty or viscous, from what has been very vividly described in Devi Bhagavata Purana (II.2.1-36). The encounter took place over six millennia before our present day, between Sage Parashar and Satyavati, variously referred in ancients texts as Kali, Matsyagandha, and half a dozen other names. The narration herebelow freely adapts the textual content in the book to present the story in a more contextually meaningful and interesting way.

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The Sage was relatively young and a scion of great Vedic seer Sage Vashisht’s lineage. Satyavati was well formed but barely sixteen, who rowed a small boat to ferry travellers across river Yamuna. She was the future stepmother of grand warrior Bheeshma and the powerful matriarch of Hastinapur-based mighty Kurus, which later split into Kauravas and Pandavas during decades preceding the apocalyptical Mahabharata War.

But there were no superlatives about our protoganists when the incident took place : the Sage was greatly honoured in niche quarters but relatively unknown otherwise among common folks. Locally, the ordinary-looking but well-worked girl was better recognised, both as the Chief’s daughter and as a girl who was sharp, smart and voluptuous.

The story is but a tiny snippet within a mammoth epic. However, the unique sexual encounter of a virgin with a non-husband is neither rape nor adultery, and is teeming with information about the status of women, even minors, in the later Vedic age society prior to the Sindhu Sarasvati civilisational explosion of urban settlements in northern half of the Indian subcontinent.

The story of that day, mid-river, on the ferry…

On the boat, midway through the crossing, Sage Parashar was overcome by lust and, desiring the boat-woman, he grasped the young girl’s right hand and held her from her rowing with entreating eyes, “Please…”

Kali smiled. “Sir, what are you about to do ? Please consider, does it befit your glorious lineage descended from Sage Vashisht ? And your own ascesis and the scriptural demarche ?

” O Knower, what is this you wish, enslaved by desire ? You are the best of brahmins; rare is human birth on earth and rarer still as a brahmin. You know it all.

“O Exalted One, you notice my body is fish-odorous. Why yet do this un-aryan feeling arise ? I doubt not your wisdom, but what auspicious marks in my body do you see that you crave to possess me ? Does the desire so possess you that you forget to discriminate between what befits and what does not ?”

Thus saying , the dark-complexioned Satyavati mused : Oh, my ! In his madness to possess me this twice-born has lost his senses. He’ll upset the boat and drown me with it. He’s desperate; his heart is pierced by his want for me. None can prevent him from acting under its influence.

The girl however continued to address the great sage, in her bid to avoid the tragic event that she felt is sure to follow :

“O Great one, be patient till we reach the other bank.”

Suta, the narrator of tale in the epic, extends the story thus : Sage Parashara heeded her well-meant advice. He let go of her hand, quietened, and sat through rest of the way over the waters.

But reaching the other side, tormented by the same desire, he seized Matsyagandha again beseeching an intercourse.

Quivering with apprehension, and greatly annoyed, she spoke to the sage before her, “O foremost amongst the best of sages ! My body stinks; can you sense it not ? Making love ought to equally delight both the souls through its process to quench their wanting.”

And even as she spoke, in a flash, she turned fragrant, a sweet and pleasant presence, lovely to hold and beautiful to behold. Making his beloved musky and enchanting, the sage seized her right hand and, pulling close, squeezed her into his bosom.

But Satyavati instantly recoiled back and told the sage bent on coitus, “We are visible to everybody on the bank, O Sage, and by my father in particular. Coitus in broad daylight, in the open, would be a most beastly conduct, the thought of which disgusts me. Hence, O best of sages, wait till nightfall. It is prescribed for men to restrict the act to night time, under cover. Doing in daylight would be a grievous sin; if seen by others, it would bring great disrepute. Grant this desire of mine, o wise one.”

Finding her words logical, the generous sage at once shrouded all in mist by his yogic power. But while the riverbank was shrouded by deep darkness, Satyavati spoke to sage in a sweet, dulcet tone :

“I’m a virgin, O chief among the twice-born ! Enjoying me, you’ll depart where you will. But infallible is your seed, O Great Knower. What of me? If today I become pregnant, what shall I tell my father ? How shall I explain ? What shall I do if he casts me away ? Pray, tell me.”

The sage assuringly responded to her fears, “Beloved, today, having delighted me, you shall be restored to your virgin state. You shall regain your virginity, as of yore. Yet, woman, if you fear, ask what boon you will.”

Satyavati said, “Best of twice-born, you ever honor others. Hence act, that my father nor anyone else would know about it. Act, that my virgin status is not destroyed. And, as it happens, may your son be like you, as wondrously gifted. May my body be forever fragrant. And, may my youth be forever fresh, ever new.”

Assuring her of her son’s fame as Ved Vyas, the immortal sage with millennial reknown as compiler of Vedas and author of Puranas, Parashar swoops upon the consenting maiden. Having sated himself, the sage bathes in the Yamuna and departs, never to have any contact with her again.

The clever young girl was more than consenting and even more delighted. She bore the divine son and delivered the baby during the same shrouded while, on that isle in the river, and set the baby afloat and off. The day cleared when she reached the bank and was met by her father, who noticed nothing amiss.

The same woman drew the amorous attention of the mighty Kuru king, Shantanu, who married her. The kingdom rose in power under her deft matriarchal lead, overshadowing every other, with her gifted, undefeated warrior stepson Bheeshma at the head of the Kuru army.

But that was when the tragic consequences of the act on the river isle were yet to unfold, leading to the apocalyptical Mahabharata War…

The mind is not in the horizontal spread of, and of the same order as, the material universe, in which the body-identified individual finds itself as one amongst trillions. The Mental Space is a vertical shift away within the self and, phenomenally speaking, is of an entirely different order. A view of one’s mind is available only to the particular individual to whom the specific mind unit belongs. So, there can be no group study, examination or observation, of the mind.

The task is an uphill one : for, the individual-self must rise to identify with the witness consciousness peering through the buddhi or the intellect to avail of the toehold unaffected by the mind, against one’s own sensory habits anchored to material objects that, to our vitalised sensibility rooted in subconscious drives, promise what we all prefer in our experience : pleasure, joy, ecstasy and happiness.

But that involves allowing the emotion-backed will to take over our self, consenting to the consequential intent, wading into action for specific result, and pushing ourself through hope and despair. That choice we commit ourself to, through consent and action, is our Karma; and the habitual proclivity in the nature of our mind, to act in order to avail, is a display of the dominating Guna or the Great Qualifier of each thing or being manifest, which in this instance is Rajas.

The entire creation, gross and subtle, is qualified by the three Gunas : Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Though all three Gunas are present in each being, there is predominance of one at any given point in time in accord with its Karma or the nature of choices it has habituated itself to, the general character of the species to which it belongs, and the environment it finds itself in.

Typically, the dominance of Sattva leads one to arise and rise into more calm and peace, non-violence, quest for truth, inclination to focused contemplation and persevere at effort to gain knowledge, patience and honest conduct, freedom from envy and covetousness, and attenuation of worldly ambitions. Rajas makes one more driven to action, more given to vitality and less to self-examination, reduced scrupulousness, to more ambition for material acquisition and attachment to sensory pleasures, and to more agitated states of the mind. Tamas causes the tendency to remain in inertia and general inaction, and easy slide down into mere physical pleasure, without assuming responsibility or striving to exert.

The mind is made of wholly non-material impressions left by our Karma in the unit mind. These too determine the predominant Gunas that characterise the mind unit and qualify the “person” or the individual self attached to it. Hence, phenomenally, one with reduced residual karma would have progressively attenuated activity in Chitta and Manas, in that order.

Theoretically, an individual without any residual karma, with his quest for knowledge and experience quenched, will not have a mind unit as the rest of us are attached to. Such a person will no longer be an “individual” but will be unified with the undifferentiated infinitude of the Causal Space, where the three gunas exist in a state of perfect balance and there are no object things or differentiated beings to observe !

One is then the being itself, of which all beings are manifest and de-manifest; one is then knowledge itself, of which finite knowledge forms arise and become extinct; and, one is then bliss itself, of which all transient pleasures and joys are experienced and which all beings constantly desire. One is then the Soul of the universe, pervading the Mental and Material spaces, pervading all phenomena and beings in them.

Like this:

Rajive Malhotra’s work, ” Being Different,” is a challenging book. If literary classics are especially vested with riches that enable them to be read at different levels, Rajive’s matter-of-fact psycho-spiritual non-fiction demands a subsumation of all levels to a very specific understanding of the Indian way of life and thought, and how if differs from that in the West. The universe he lays on the table has an entire history to contend with, the evolution of values along it and how they express today in acts, thoughts and utterences of typical Hindu and Western or West-imbibed individuals today.

It reminds me of Albert Camus’ works and my own growing up in a partially Western scheme, if not values. His works show a subjectivity cut off from the supernatural paradigms in Judeo-Christian context and its alienation from the absurd world about him. His protagonist acts but only as drawn by situation and events and, very tellingly, fails to express the being he is privy to, of himself.

What value abides in a world without order ? What do we make of this existential chaos ? These questions preoccupy Camus through every one of his works, wherein he intuits answers while feeling the presence of the cosmos in his own being, and in the being about him. This mode is extraordinary, compared with how the Western laity and leadership dwell within the monotheistic framework laid out and imposed by the Church. But for the poetic souls who embrace the irrational, with capacity for extended sensibilities, it is especially uncommon among linearly inclined atheists, materialists, logicians and rationalists, scientists, politicians and businessmen.

Rajive Malhotra’s work, ” Being Different,” is a challenging book. If literary classics are especially vested with riches that enable them to be read at different levels, Rajive’s matter-of-fact psycho-spiritual non-fiction demands a subsumation of all levels to a very specific understanding of the Indian way of life and thought, and how if differs from that in the West. The universe he lays on the table has an entire history to contend with, the evolution of values along it and how they express today in acts, thoughts and utterences of typical Hindu and Western or West-imbibed individuals today.

With the death of the victim of the Delhi gang rape, the prosecution would now introduce Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (murder) into the chargesheet thus giving them the option of seeking a death penalty for the accused. However the bigger question that needs to be debated is regarding one of the accused who turns 18 in four months. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children Act) (JJ Act) states that an offence committed by a person below 18 is an act of innocence.
Around 8 years back the act was amended and the age of a juvenile under the law was enhanced from 16 to 18.
When JJ Act was amended the age limit enhanced from 16 to 18, it was said by our law makers, “India, today needs children who can grow up to be responsible citizens of tomorrow.”